Coffees of 2011

Last year I saw the collection of coffee bags from 2010 saved by Mat Honan and then Mike White, and thought it would be fun to have a go at collecting everything we taste at work for a year. I’ve seen a couple of people post their 2011 collection this year – Mike White again, and Brian at DCILY.

I mostly succeeded at remembering to keep the bags, though looking through there were about 20-30 bags that didn’t make it and must have been thrown away – which is a bit annoying.

Click to embiggen - larger image further down ↓

There are 183 bags here (to save anyone from counting), and I think (or at least hope) that many other roasteries would have a similar collection if they tried. To taste other people’s coffees is great for setting benchmarks, great for inspiration (even if that inspiration is often rooted in jealousy, as mine often is) and great for palate development. Also it’s fun. If I think that when you add on all the samples and production roasts we’ve cupped this year, and the coffees drunk in various cafes and other roasteries – we’ve tasted a lot of different coffee. (But not enough…)

What blows my mind is that each one of these tasted different. Very different. There is such diversity in coffee, and this was a great way to appreciate it.

I should add that most of these were gifts. Thank you to everyone who gave us coffee – it is very much appreciated.

Anyway – here is the big photo. Sorry everything isn’t in focus. I tried a few different things to get a good shot where you could see every bag properly, but I’m sad to say I mostly failed. 1 Also – I’m not going to rank them. Mostly because my taste memory isn’t very good, and I wasn’t taking notes.